In the 19th century most of the factories in western countries have made their employees work for 12 hours a day and more. After a few years of such exhausting work many people had become ill, but then the factories just replaced them with new workers. These short-sighted policies I believe have not only decreased the total economic output but also made a lot of people ill and exhausted.
Although I am not an expert on that period, but it seems to me that unionizing and labor laws have lead to a better economy and well being overall. So despite the fact that unions and labor laws are usually considered anti-Libertarian, I am not convinced it is always the case.
Unions are not inherently anti-libertarian any more than corporations are inherently anti-libertarian. At the core they’re just a group of people voluntarily agreeing to pool thier labor under specific conditions. However contemporary unions love using the State to obtain advantages and protections.
Labor laws, however, don’t jive with libertarian thought.
Overall the improvement in working conditions wasn’t nessecarily due to labor laws. As society’s capital improved, people increased thier standard of living and demanded more lesiure time and compensation. Likewise, employers were also richer and more willing to give into thier employee’s demands. At the same time many employers were finding out that, as you noted, working people ragged was a poor way of treating “human capital”, and that they could get large increases in productivity by actually decreasing working hours, improving working conditions, etc.
Yes, they are always bad. They punish business owners, and non-union labor.
If a union is taking no agressive action (physically blocking or attacking non-union workers, destroying equipment, etc.) or getting help from the State then where’s the harm? I think saying they are always bad is going to far.
As opposed to working on the farm for 12 hours a day and more?
Do you have anything with which to back up this claim?
If they decreased the total economic output, then why would factory owners and managers continue such policies?
Unions per se are not anti-libertarian. Of course, a lot of the unions’ power comes from laws which force businesses to negotiate with them. In a free market, businesses would not be prima facie obligated to negotiate with unions.
Woah woah woah. I went to a government school where we were forced to pick crops for a local and politically-connected restauranteur … I mean grow local, organic food for the glorious benefit of our bodies… and the purse of the politically-connected restauranteur.
They are “good” when they achieve more favorable working conditions/compensation from their employer for thier members via non-aggressive means. Investors pool thier capital to acheive better deals for themselves, why is it “bad” for workers to pool thier collective negotiations with thier employer?
Yes, they are always bad. They punish business owners, and non-union labor.
You may be able to argue that if there is a hampered/ subsidized market on the top, than it may be best for labor laws to exist. As of now, I still can’t see it as a net economic gain, but I do see where the argument is coming from.
You guys should probably make it clear as to what definitions you’re each using. That is, unions backed by the state versus unions as voluntary associations.
Collective negotiation lowers the cost of negotiations. While some in the group may inevitably get worse terms than they would have if they had negotiated their contract individually, collective negotiation is advantageous if the costs of individual negotiation outweigh these potential gains.
State-backed unions are bad, for the same reasons everything state-backed is bad, but I can imagine “private unions” may work like firms: A company may pay a “worker’s union” for the services of their employees rather than paying the employees themselves, and the employees receive their salaries from the union. Obviously this arrangement has to be more advantageous than individual employment contracts for everyone but I see no inherent reason why it wouldn’t work in at least some circumstances.
I’ve covered this union stuff here many times. We’re not talking hypotheticals. Let’s talk nuts and bolts.
I am a valuable employee. My self interest is undermined by joining a class which includes less valuable employees. Management should negotiate with me directly, negotiating as a class not only doesn’t help me, it doesn’t help management.
I am a loser employee. I benefit from being part of a class that has bargaining power because more valuable employees are members. Management incurs costs to negotiate for my services they would not even have spent a second on, because they want to retain those higher value employees in my class.
Without a 100% union shop, which is impossible without 100% voluntary participation, and without being able to organize on company time, or to have stewards on the company payroll, without having access to the contact information for all of the employees outside the firm, or being able to advertise IN the firm, and without being able to force the firm to deduct union dues from paychecks, but to take it out of people’s net receipts after taxes, and without being able to use aggression, threats etc, WHAT LEVERAGE BESIDES MILKING HIGH VALUE EMPLOYEES does a union have?
And even if one can organize a union, what is to stop a firm from just hiring completely new people? That bargaining leverage will never be able to exceed the market value of the most valuable members of the union. Because as soon as that value is reached, it is cheaper to poach talent from competitors and bypass the union completely.
I am 100% for guilds. I belong to several informal guilds and they have tremendous value. We even take collective action (voluntarily) sometimes, but those guilds are very selective about who becomes a member, and they are organized outside the places we do business, on our own time. They confer no privileges and they make no guarantees. They have no fees and operate little if any bureaucracy. They are strictly a medium for professionals to share information, opportunities and form partnerships.
So if you think unions are impossible without government laws, and you are against laws in this matter, then you imply that unions cannot exist? What do you then think about the working conditions in the 19th century, and the fact that factories utilized workers until they were damaged and then replaced them with new immigrants?